Malka Silberstein

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Malka Silberstein (to 1935 Malka Schli (s) fstein, 1935-1939 Malka slept stone Abram November * 2 . Jul / 15. November  1903 greg. In Vilnius , Vilna Governorate , Russian Empire ; † in the late summer of 1941 on the island of Hiiumaa , unsure) was an Estonian lawyer.

Lawyer

Malka Silberstein was born as Malka Schli (e) fstein in Vilnius. Due to a childhood illness, she had to sit in a wheelchair and could only walk on crutches. Her father Israel Schliefstein was a dentist. The family was of Jewish descent .

Malka Schliefstein first studied medicine at the University of Tartu in the Republic of Estonia in 1922/23 , then from 1923 to 1926 law . She graduated with the distinction cum laude .

Schliefstein was one of the first female lawyers in the Republic of Estonia . From 1926 to 1931 Malka Schliefstein was employed in the law firm of the Estonian lawyer and politician Mihkel Pung (1876–1941). From 1931 she ran her own law firm in Tallinn as a licensed attorney ( vandeadvokaat ) .

The young and successful lawyer in a wheelchair, with her long red hair, was a prominent figure in Estonia in the interwar period . At the end of the 1920s, she and two lawyers campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty in the Estonian penal code.

Private life

In 1935 she married the Jewish publicist Tevje Abram (1910–1981) and took the name Schliefstein-Abram . The marriage ended in divorce in 1939.

In 1940 she was called Malka Silberstein after her marriage to the Slavist Leopold Adolf Silberstein (1900–1941). Her second husband had emigrated to Prague from Germany in 1933 . Since 1937 he has been teaching Czech language and literature at the University of Tartu on behalf of the Czechoslovak government and German literature at the Jewish high school in Tallinn. He was murdered by the security police in 1941 during the German occupation of Estonia .

Soviet occupation

With the Soviet occupation of Estonia in the summer of 1940, Silberstein became an employee of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the Estonian SSR and the Soviet Public Prosecutor's Office. She was involved in the persecution of opponents of the communist regime for the NKVD . Contemporary witnesses accuse her of atrocities against prisoners.

In August 1941 the German Wehrmacht occupied Estonia in the course of the attack on the Soviet Union . Malka Silberstein was shot dead by his own people on the Estonian island of Hiiumaa in late summer 1941 . Her alleged body and the remains of five other NKVD employees were found in a Soviet mass grave not far from Kärdla during the German occupation of Estonia .

There are contradicting accounts of her activities during the Soviet occupation of Estonia, her fate and the place where she died.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Vaba Maa , November 1, 1928, No. 254, p. 2
  2. ↑ http://eja.pri.ee/allname/engine.php?=&offset=10094
  3. ↑ http://www.koolitaja.ee/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Juudid.pdf
  4. ↑ http://www.ekspress.ee/news/paevauudised/ajalugu/julmad-seelikukandjad.d?id=63318608
  5. ↑ http://www.nommevalitsus.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8236&Itemid=97&lang=et
  6. ↑ http://db.yadvashem.org/names/nameDetails.html?itemId=9691637&language=en
personal data
SURNAME Silberstein, Malka
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schliefstein, Malka; Schlifstein, Malka; Schliefstein-Abram, Malka
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Estonian lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Vilnius , Vilnius Governorate , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH 1941
Place of death Hiiumaa Island , Estonia